Last year at election time we were asked for $500. Many paid and many did not, however, everybody voted. I paid attention and I saw contractors that are not members cast votes.

Can someone please explain how the voting works?

Hello Mike. Only members should have cast votes last year; I would be open to going back and perform an audit. Several people were turned away because they were not members. I am reviewing final details with the steering committee and will publish very clear procedures for this year. Thanks to MIEMS, now there is no longer any question who is currently a member and who is not. Thanks again for your concerns; please don't hesitate to ask follow up questions.

If the associate contractors are reading this they may find value in becoming full Liseia members so they can take advantage of the voting process. Currently, I believe there are only 23 voting members. If smaller contractors believe they need representation they should become voting members.

$500?

LISEIA has no dues structure. (Hence why we have so few resources to do all the smart and wonderful things everyone expects)

NYSEIA revised it's dues structure this year and prorated everyone based on their anniversary of joining. For example if the year before you joined in June, then you had already paid dues thru June 2010 and were prorated at the new level thru end of 2010. However if you chose not to follow up and pay the prorata dues, you remained a member until your anniversary date (as you had paid dues under the old rules) and were not "dropped" until your old dues expired. This years NYSEIA election has been run on a member list that follows that theory. It took 10 weeks and countless hours to fix the list, but it's good and the website (NYSEIA) is current.

The LISEIA elections were held in November which would have necessarily been based on Nov 2009 NYSEIA and LISEIA membership. While it's alot to take in, perhaps this clears things up?

If we're sure that someone wasn't a member and voted, then perhaps we can have the name of that firm, and we'll run it to ground. Without a name, there's not much that we can do, as we were certain that the voters were members.

PS, I stand ready to eat crow in a public forum if this is inaccurate.

Sail

NYSEIA revised it's dues structure this year and prorated everyone based on their anniversary of joining. For example if the year before you joined in June, then you had already paid dues thru June 2010 and were prorated at the new level thru end of 2010. However if you chose not to follow up and pay the prorata dues, you remained a member until your anniversary date (as you had paid dues under the old rules) and were not "dropped" until your old dues expired.

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Thanks for explaining this. Now I understand why I saw many contractors voting.

Mike, I asked Kevin & Sail how many members we have. Kevin was not sure, Sail believes we should go by the MIEM's listing which shows a total of 27 members. 4 regular members and 23 member contractors.

Sail and I discussed that with the advent of MIEM's there may be some like Go Solar who have dropped to the Associates list, but may meet all the requirements for full membership and only need to fill out the online MIEM's application.

I spoke with Bill Feldman recently when I realized we were both working on membership assistance and recruitement. He is working as member chair to contact all Associates, let them know what they need to do to become full members and determine if they need assistance with that process.

Some Associates have applied for full membership, but are new and need to go through the RELI listing process, meet RELI's requirements, attend a certain number of LISEIA meetings, send in NYSEIA membership fees, sign the ethics document, etc. Directions for this are posted on the MIEM's site by Greg Sachs.

Others are choosing to be Associates only, which is fine too. Associates are highly valued, they just don't get membership privileges which include voting and access to LISEIA members only Email list for internal member discussions.

Greg manages the MIEMs site and can help people having problems with it. I can help with MIEMs to a lessor degree, I know how to help people with the online application process for both Associate or Member applications (same basic form, just check different information off).

James Peck